


the setting sun

by tongari



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: BASARA3 spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 18:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tongari/pseuds/tongari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WARNING: MASSIVE, MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR ANIKI'S GREEN ROUTE IN BASARA 3</p><p>Motochika and Mitsunari, on the concept of forgiveness and the difficulty of putting theories into practice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the setting sun

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't actually played the final battle yet (the infamous okra-bashing one, so I've heard) and I can't remember if aniki kills Gyoubu at Osaka (I played it on Extreme, was trying to stay alive and failed to pay attention to the dialogue orz) so I'm just going to assume here that Gyoubu is dead by now and aniki kills Mouri, with Mitsunari and Ieyasu as his allies at the final battle.

Come dusk, there were fires on the beach, food and drink raided from Aki's supplies, and Motochika's men drank and sang with the Ishida army under purple and fuchsia banners streaming, with the wind, seaward. At some point he left them and went to walk the long corridors of Itsukushima alone. They seemed unnaturally silent, almost pensive at the sound of his alien footfalls; he felt like an intruder in their midst.

"I guess I am," he said. He looked up at the great mirror mounted high above the shrine, harmless now, hastily veiled by heavy tarpaulins.

"Chousokabe? Who are you speaking to?"

He turned around, spitting a curse, he hadn't even heard the faintest sigh of breath or footsteps behind him. "Ishida! Damn you, make some noise when you're keeping someone company, will you?"

As always, when he was talking to Ishida Mitsunari, he had the faint, nagging thought that the man was actually not listening to his words but actually watching his face, his stance, the distance between them. And processing, in that strangely-shaped head of his, the exact angle and timing needed to dodge any sudden movement, draw his blade, strike, flick the blood from his sword and replace it in its sheath...

Yet it was not exactly an unpleasant feeling. Although the first impression one always had was of a barely maintained grip on sanity, Mitsunari's dogged, unwavering gaze also brought to mind a ferocious but rather simple beast, one which simply could not turn and bite the hand that had - instead of beating it for a misdemeanour - gently petted it on the head (and, to its bemusement, scratched it behind the ears). Some of this uneasy feeling had also faded since he had personally gone to Osaka and kicked some sense into Mitsunari, at least with regards to Mitsunari's heated pursuit and intended decapitation of Tokugawa Ieyasu. For example, Mitsunari had recently been on the same island as Ieyasu for a whole twelve hours and both had still been alive (and the island, blessedly, still mostly above water) at the time of Ieyasu's departure...

He remembered seeing the Tokugawa naval forces rolling into the distance, and wondering vaguely if he should have had Mitsunari tailed just to make sure the idiot didn't forget himself and take off after Ieyasu in one of his vengeance-fueled fits, sword between teeth and all.. But Itsukushima's shadow had fallen over him then, and everywhere he turned the darkness - the absence of the sun? - had haunted him, and all he really wanted to do then was drink, and be happy, and forget.

And he had been able to forget, and be somewhat, moodily, content, until he turned around to find Mitsunari at his back. An uncanny ally, a vicious enemy: fox-eyed and silent-footed, at once faster and sharper than the cruelest winds - yet, underneath these terrifying stylings, so startlingly honest, simple, and sincere. When they had first set out together, Motochika had idly wondered if he could trust this creature to guard his back. After all, he'd already been turned upon and sliced open once, spine to heart, by another creature he thought he'd tamed... But Mitsunari had also once surrendered his sword, stood before an enemy unarmed, waiting to be judged and sentenced for his friend's crimes; and Mitsunari also stood before him now unarmoured, bare arms emerging from a sleeveless black gi, pale and impossible as a ghost. Motochika looked at him and thought; I have known the sun, and now I know the moon.

He started to laugh.

Mitsunari angled his head to one side; his expression stated that he was confused and did not like the feel of it at all. Motochika sighed, and abandoned any illusion he might have had regarding Mitsunari's sense of humour.

"You remind me of someone I knew," he said.

Mitsunari made a sharp, dismissive sound and smacked his sword against his thigh.

"Chosokabe Motochika," he said. "I did not come here to be insulted. I came to ask of you, I wanted to ask... To ask..."

He lowered his head, gripped his sword by its sheath, and fought some silent, internal battle with himself that involved a lot of fist-clenching and hitting himself on the legs with his sheathed sword and growling beneath the shadow of his signature white forelock. Motochika folded his arms across his chest and waited. Finally Mitsunari said:

"Please," with great difficulty, "I beg that you would forgive Gyoubu."

Motochika looked at him for a while without speaking. Perhaps, he thought, even if he had tried, he would have been unable to.

"Why is your mouth open?" Mitsunari asked suspiciously.

"Say it again," Motochika said.

"Why is your mouth o-"

"Never mind, I guess I heard right. And I guess you really do mean it because you're just that kind of person who doesn't say things until they mean it, aren't you?"

Mitsunari glowered at him. Perhaps he imagined it but there was a hint of red to Mitsunari's sharp cheeks that might have been from all the sake on the beach, or the exertion of fighting his own pride, or just Motochika's wishful thinking..

"You still mean what you said?"

"Yes. I wish that you would forgive Gyoubu."

"I mean, back at Osaka.That I could do whatever I wanted with you--"

Mitsunari drew his sword and placed it across his own throat. It happened so fast that all Motochika saw was a flash of purple and then a thin red line appearing below Mitsunari's jaw. "Stop that," he said, and before he knew it the sword was in its sheath and Mitsunari was unarmed again, hands at his sides, a thin red line starting to crawl down his neck. Motochika bent closer to inspect the damage - "Don't move," he growled as Mitsunari automatically flinched away - and then, "Come on."

He didn't touch Mitsunari until they were on board the ship, and then it was only to shove him - not unkindly - through the double doors, into an explosion of clutter (both treasure and junk, irreparably fused together) which he called the captain's quarters. "Sit down," he said. Mitsunari looked about the crowded cabin, folded his impossibly long legs and settled obligingly on a rare clearing on the floor -- "There are cushions, geez, I'm not a total barbarian," Motochika complained. "Some of them are even comfortable!" He kicked open a series of chests all around the room until he found one he liked. From his seat Mitsunari watched - warily, bony knuckles pressed to the wooden floor - as Motochika wrestled with the lid of a jar, swearing all the while.

"There," Motochika said. "Don't move," and he swiped his hand, laden with what he hoped were healing herbs ground into a sweet-smelling paste, across Mitsunari's throat. There was a small, localized scuffle as habit automatically kicked in and Mitsunari's body assumed it was in danger, but most fortunately

1) he had placed his sword by the door before sitting down, and

2) Motochika had been expecting this. All Mitsunari actually achieved as he instinctively lunged at the perceived threat was to tangle his legs up and trip over Motochika's strategically placed foot, then to receive a hundred and eighty pounds of Motochika in the sternum, slamming him down to the floor.

"Aren't you glad there are cushions?" Motochika asked, when he had regained his breath.

"Unforgivable," Mitsunari said, with great effort.

Motochika laughed. He closed his one good eye and listened to the sound of Mitsunari's agitated breathing, felt the rise and fall of the man's chest, the hammering of his heart. Mitsunari's ribs against his chest felt like a cage of bones. "You should eat more," he said. He flicked a finger against the angular wedge of hair weeping down Mitsunari's forehead - "What the hell is that made of, steel?" - and saw Mitsunari's eyes refocusing, pupils almost black in the poor light, looking up at him as though from under some great shadow. And Motochika recalled other eyes staring at him, their owner equally trapped under his weight - or so he'd thought, at the time. Eyes equally unreadable, with a wholly different animal behind them.

"You'll forgive Gyoubu," Mitsunari said.

"But he's dead," Motochika replied, and felt Mitsunari's entire body flinch.

"Your men speak of him," Mitsunari said. "Around the fire. They hate him. You hate him."

"Still do, hasn't changed."

Mitsunari's eyes squeezed shut; his lips curled over his clenched teeth. "You don't know. Gyoubu didn't want this. He said it was unwise. Called me a fool. Stupid. Begged me to stop."

"Doesn't sound like him," Motochika said. But he observed, wonderingly, the change in Mitsunari's face when speaking of Otani Yoshitsugu; the sudden reluctance of its eyes to meet his, a tenderness tempering its habitual growl. "What happened?"

"I carried on," Mitsunari said. "He followed. Diseased, dying... He followed. Made plans with Mouri, for me, everything for me. Nothing for himself. Stupid."

And Motochika remembered Yoshitsugu's dry voice, the hollowness of his eyes hidden behind the bandages, the mask strapped to his helmet as if it was all that held the man together..

"What about you?" he asked. "Begging forgiveness for a dead man. Going after your old friend's head for another dead man. Aren't you just as stupid?"

"Not a dead man," Mitsunari said. "Lord Hideyoshi. Gyoubu. They are more than dead men. To me."

His voice cracked on the last syllable, his stony face flooded with something that looked like pain. Motochika put a hand on Mitsunari's chest, saw his green eyes flare wide with surprise. He loosed the ties of Mitsunari's gi, ran his hand over the bony ribs underneath, explored a sharp outcropping of hip, a stretch of flat belly... Mitsunari's eyes narrowed to slits, then shut entirely; his hands, midway to Motochika's throat, clenched, fell slowly to the floor.

There were no more words after that, not for a while. Perhaps some went through Mitsunari's mind, but simply fighting the urge to fend off Motochika's hungry mouth and hands must have kept him so occupied, he never found the concentration required to convert them to speech. Motochika spoke, occasionally, into the most secret corners of Mitsunari's body, mouth pressed warm to skin; of the sun, and the moon, and the fools who pursued them. But the words were heavy on his tongue, bit into him and made him careless, sometimes cruel. Soon he, too, stopped speaking entirely.

*

"Okay, I'll forgive him," Motochika said. "Promise me something in return."

Mitsunari uttered a sound like an short, indignant bark and rolled over with a growl - as much as he could, with Motochika's vastly superior weight draped over him in the manner of a very satisfied rug. "What? Then what was that about?"

"What, that?"

"That, this." Mitsunari's face was a furious, beautiful red, from the roots of his impossible hair to the edges of his ears. "Wasn't this about that?"

"Ishida, you're normally so straightforward, I can't understand what you're going on about--"

Mitsunari lunged for his throat. Much chewing, growling, yelling and shaking later, they agreed to a temporary truce; Motochika sat up, stacked all the cushions into a pile and leaned weakly upon them, arms wrapped around Mitsunari's unprotesting frame. The gap between his chin and one shoulder provided an opportune spot for even the most strangely-shaped of heads to rest.

"It's very easy," Motochika said reassuringly, trying to puff Mitsunari's hair out with his breath but failing.

"What?"

"You forgive Ieyasu."

"UNFORGIV--"

"Ow, ow, ow," Motochika said, wincing. "Come on! You want me to do something for you and you won't do the same for me?"

"How is it even the same--"

"It's the same."

"How dare you compare Lord Hideyoshi and Gyoubu to--"

"How dare _you_ compare," and Motochika began to recite names, and as he spoke each name his voice cracked, his body shook, tears climbed down his chin and wet the back of Mitsunari's neck. For the first time in his life Mitsunari listened in silence, head bowed, to the sound of someone else's love, someone else's grief, someone else's loss. And as the names went on and on something happened to him, like what had happened when they'd fought at Osaka, the first time Motochika's voice fought through the layers of anger he had wrapped himself in since Hideyoshi's death. It had been a voice of reason then but it was devoid of reason now; instead, full of affection, devoid of hope. Mitsunari understood: the names Motochika called out had once been smiles, hands thumping his back, shoulders crowding his, drunken voices joining his in bawdy chorus, perhaps somewhere among them a cheek pressed against his, a soft hand laid against the scarred socket of his missing left eye; friends, brothers, beloved, now never able to call his name in return.

When he was done - the last name no more than a whisper against Mitsunari's back - the cabin was utterly silent. Mitsunari said nothing for a long time, as if giving the ghosts of the dead a chance to leave them.

At last he said, "I'll think about it."

"Good boy," Motochika said weakly, closing his good eye. "You think about it. I'm going to take a nap. Must be getting old..."

"Chousokabe."

"Eh?" Motochika cranked his eye open with a sigh. Mitsunari had turned around and was looking at him, all the violence fled from his face and leaving only a worried, almost childish curiosity.

"Why do you mourn... Mouri?"

Motochika stared at him for a while; then, abruptly, tipped him forward onto the floor, rose to his feet, grabbed his coat from the back of a chair and kicked the door of the cabin open. He went out and stood on the deck for a long time after that, his coat pulled tight around him. Mitsunari must have come to the doorway and looked after him, a shout of anger rising to his lips; but then, seeing Motochika standing on the deck, looking at Itsukushima's red pillars rising out of the sea, he must have just as quietly backed off and settled down to think about his own problems.

Later, returning to the cabin, Motochika found him sleeping in a pile of rugs and furs scavenged from various corners of the room. For a while he sat down and simply watched the rise and fall of Mitsunari's bony chest. Then he too lay down, curled an arm around and buried his face in Mitsunari's warm thighs. They were somewhat too lean and bony for his liking, and his head and heart were still hollow; but they were warm, and their owner was alive, and at least for tonight, his arms were full.

The sun is dead, he thought. Long live the sun.


End file.
